The quiet pain of insider shootings in Afghanistan

Widows of two of the dead officers, along with a former Air Force legal officer, are convinced that Gul had help from fellow Afghan officers.

“You’d have to suspend disbelief to assume one Afghan airman could shoot and kill nine Americans, eight of them armed and well-trained,” said retired Air Force Lt. Col. Sally Stenton, a former civilian police investigator who was a legal officer assigned to the airport the day of the attack…

“The American government is putting a Band-Aid on the issue,” said retired Air Force Capt. Suzanna Ausborn, whose husband, Air Force Maj. Jeffrey Ausborn, was killed at the airport.

Miriam Nylander Hamilton, a former Air Force enlistee whose husband, Capt. Nathan Nylander, also died that April morning, said the U.S. military was continuing to expose its forces to turncoat Afghan security force members — or insurgents posing as army or police. She said her husband told her that commanders emphasized maintaining good relations with Afghans, rather than focusing on advisors’ security.